“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.” – Adelle Davis (1904 – 1974)

Even though we all need food to survive our relationship with food goes much deeper than that, we have developed this amazing love affair with it. All animals need to eat but we have turned eating and drinking into an art form.

# The senses: Eating and drinking is one of the few things that involves using all of our senses, we can see, hear, smell, touch and taste it. A good meal is indeed a truly absorbing experience.

# Provision: Our ancestors prided themselves in hunting down their food. Feasting on the catch was considered a great celebration, a time to be happy and grateful.

# Preparation: Many people love the act of preparing food, and making a delicious meal can be extremely rewarding.

# Dining/eating out: This is a very sociable thing to do, wether it’s in a posh restaurant or at a roadside cafe. Sharing food and conversation is a very important part of our society.

‘If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.’ – J R R Tolkien (1892 – 1973)

# Diet: Obviously a balanced diet is vital for us to lead a happy life. Modern-day life has made the availability of food plentiful for many of us. The down side to this is that we tend to over eat and under exercise.

However, too much is made of dieting, the more we think about something the more we want to do it.

Food is part of our lifestyle, and as such if we want to lose weight we need to change that lifestyle. Starving the body is no good for anyone.

Small portins eaten often is the key to a healthy diet.

Modern-day lifestyles do not lend themselves to ‘not eating between meals’. Once we accept this we will also accept that we can and will eat many times a day. Thus the smaller the portions the better.

The three square meals philosophy believed in by our parents and grand parents no longer holds true.

Let’s hope we can maintain our centuries-old love affair with food because at the end of the day we should eat to live not live to eat.

‘Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.’ – Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)